Contrasting growth and water use efficiency after thinning in mixed Abies pinsapo-Pinus pinaster-Pinus sylvestris forests

Foresters frequently lack sufficient information about thinning intensity effects to optimize semi-natural forest management and their effects and interaction with climate are still poorly understood. In an Abies pinsapo–Pinus pinaster–Pinus sylvestris forest with three thinning intensities, a dendrochronologial approach was used to evaluate the short-term responses of basal area increment (BAI), carbon isotope (δ13C) and water use efficiency (iWUE) to thinning intensity and climate. Thinning generally increased BAI in all species, except for the heavy thinning in P. sylvestris. Across all the plots, thinning increased 13C-derived water-use efficiency on average by 14.49% for A. pinsapo, 9.78% for P. sylvestris and 6.68% for P. pinaster, but through different ecophysiological mechanisms. Our findings provide a robust mean of predicting water use efficiency responses from three coniferous species exposed to different thinning strategies which have been modulated by climatic conditions over time.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Journal of forest science

• Publication date

  2016-02-23

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.17221/104/2015-JFS
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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